Pharmaceutical company Sanofi agreed yesterday to provide “in excess of” $50m in equity funding, fees and research services for US-based small-molecule drug development startup Dice Molecules.
Dice is developing small-molecule compounds that could potentially unlock protein-protein interfaces that orally-taken drugs have found intractable. It aims to fund its work chiefly through revenues and milestone awards gained through collaborations.
The cash and services, as well as upfront, target exclusivity and technology access fees, will be supplied to Dice as part of a five-year collaboration agreement to explore new therapeutics for up to 12 disease target areas that are of strategic interest to Sanofi.
Dice will also be eligible to receive up to $184m in research, clinical and regulatory milestone payments from Sanofi for each target, and royalty payments based on future net sales of each compound Sanofi ends up developing.
The collaboration is being undertaken as part of Sunrise, the Sanofi strategic partnership initiative that provides funding and expertise to early-stage, ‘transformative’ medical technology developers.
Kathy Bowdish, head of Sunrise, said: “We hope this partnership will help deliver essential therapies against currently intractable disease targets, and help patients who otherwise have been unable to receive treatments outside of the in-patient setting.
“This initiative will allow our teams to combine their wealth of knowledge in drug discovery and further strengthens Sanofi’s commitment to open innovation.”